The invention relates to a vehicle wheel, in particular for passenger cars, comprising a rim part for receiving a tyre and a disc part which is connected to the rim part and is formed from a one-piece sheet metal blank by forming and cutting or punching, which disc part includes a central portion having bolt holes for wheel bolts and a central aperture for a vehicle hub and a plurality of radially extending spoke arrangements, formed by shaping the sheet metal, for transmitting force between vehicle hub and rim part, each spoke arrangement being provided with a radially extending central web which merges on each side into a radially extending lateral web, bent outwardly from the plane of the central web, and then into an edge web bent back again with respect to the lateral web, the radially outer ends of the central webs and of the lateral webs merging into a circumferential annular disc edge oriented precisely parallel or substantially parallel axially to the wheel axis and connecting all the spoke arrangements to one another, which disc edge is formed integrally from the sheet metal, forms the connecting part for the connection between rim part and disc part and in each case delimits, together with the edge webs of adjacent spoke arrangements, ventilation apertures which extend over the region between the edge webs and the disc edge.
A generic vehicle wheel for passenger cars, on which the preamble of claim 1 is based, is known from EP 1 262 333 A2 of the applicant, is usually referred to commercially as a “structured wheel” and is marketed by the applicant under the trade name “Versastyle®”. Through its construction this vehicle wheel, which is produced from a steel blank by shaping and has comparatively large-area ventilation apertures, can compete with aluminium wheels not only economically in terms of weight but also in terms of style, on the one hand because the wheel has a striking appearance resulting from the interplay between the multiple shaping of the spoke arrangements and the large ventilation apertures and, on the other, because different hub caps can be used with this vehicle wheel without disadvantage to the total weight of the wheel fitted with hub cap, as compared to a comparable cast-aluminium vehicle wheel.
The vehicle wheel known from EP 1 262 333 A1 forms a new type of embossed steel wheel for passenger cars which hitherto has been produced only with five bolt holes and five spoke arrangements distributed symmetrically with respect to the bolt holes. Other manufacturers have also proposed innovations to this type of vehicle wheel, as shown, for example, by U.S. Pat. No. 7,104,611 B2 or EP 1 790 499 A1, in which minimal modifications to the vehicle wheel according to EP 1 262 333 A1 are described and all of which start from this vehicle wheel as the nearest prior art.
Passenger cars, especially in the small, compact and mid-sized classes, frequently require wheels with four-hole fixing. The wheel structure according to EP 1 262 333 A2 thus gives rise to a steel vehicle wheel with four spoke arrangements and four bolt holes.